You are a speck of dust. Do you even matter?

Dear Friend,

I recently saw a picture of planet Earth depicted as a tiny blue dot in the cosmos.

Against the backdrop of that tiny blue dot, if you were to think of any one life – any one of us – it would appear so insignificant it would feel as if your life is utterly and wholly inconsequential.

But is that really true?

I once heard a beautiful story told of someone’s great grandfather.

“He was a man of little wealth who still managed to give every single day of his life.

Each morning, he had a ritual of going on a walk — and as he walked, he diligently fed the ant hills along his path with small pinches of wheat flour.

Now that is an act of micro generosity so small that it might seem utterly negligible, in the grand scheme of the universe.

How does it matter?

It matters in that it changed him inside.

And my great grandfather’s goodness shaped the worldview of my grandparents who in turn influenced that of their children — my parents.

Today those ants and the ant hills are gone,

but my great grandpa’s spirit is very much embedded in all my actions and their future ripples.

It is precisely these small, often invisible, acts of inner transformation that mould the stuff of our being,

and bend the arc of our shared destiny.”

This story forever changed the way I look at our seemingly “utterly negligible” lives.

Here you had a speck of dust,
feeding a speck of dust
to even tinier specks of dust,

…and yet his impact is still being felt several generations later.

What you do – and who you become – has the potential to send out powerful ripples far and wide, in both space and time.

You may be a speck of dust. That is true.

But boy, do you matter. Oh yes you do!

Warmly,
Bhavna Toor
Chief Mindfulness Officer
Shenomics